Oh the glorious angst. Also, I may do more than one pairing per person (depending on which pairings I'm really feeling at the moment).
The first time she tries to visit him, she is denied.
Jellal Fernandes was not to have any visitors, they told her. It was part of his crime that he had to remain in that cell for life, deprived of any human contact save for that of his jailors.
She doesn't try again for a long time, but the second time she does, it's different.
Even the rulings of the Council will bend a little for the will of one of the Ten Mage Saints.
That was how it started.
At first, it was awkward. He didn't want to face her, so he would sit in his cell, his back to her, and she would stand there and wait, for four hours, until her allotted time was up, and the jailors came back to escort her away.
And she would be back next month.
Eventually they started to speak. She told him of the changes in the guild over the years, and what Wally and the others had been doing the last time she saw them. He told her, slowly, haltingly, of the things he'd remembered. The bond is rebuilt, reaffirmed, growing beyond what it had been even before she had left the Tower of Paradise.
It is the day that he fully remembers Simon's death that he finally breaks the last wall between them, reaching out and pulling her face to his.
"I'm sorry," he whispers, and his lips travel over her cheeks and forehead and eyelids until finally he speaks against her mouth itself. "I'm sorry."
The kiss is salty from tears. She knows she should hate him, should push him away. But hasn't he suffered enough? Haven't they both suffered enough? So she lets him kiss her that day.
And when she comes back the next month, she let it happen again.
She should have known it would turn into this.
His breathing is heavy in her ear, like his body on top of hers. Their skin slides together, sweat mingling, and she can feel his muscles moving in his back underneath her hands as she pulls him closer. Their eyes are locked and he is inside her and she can barely breathe.
This is not the first time, and she knows that it will not be the last.
Every visit she tells herself that this will be the visit where she informs him that this has to stop, that she's not going to come to him anymore. But somehow she can't make the words come out, and then she's crawling on top of him, and their mouths are melting together and his hands are easing her blouse off her shoulders-
That should have been a sign to her. If she really meant to end this, she'd have worn her regular armour.
She's gasping, fingernails digging into his shoulders, and colours are starting to burst in front of her eyes, and he's tensing and losing rhythm and shuddering against her, and he presses his forehead to hers and exhales her name.
"Erza..."
What is she doing?